Days 3, 4 and 5 Kraków
20 November is the day I go to Auchwitz-Birkenau. No doubt one of the most famous places in the world for all the wrong reasons.
I got up early and got a bus out to the museum for my 9am tour.
I have a 6 hour "study tour" booked for the museum because that was the only English tour slot available on the days I was going to be in Kraków. The study tour is about 3 hours of guided tour in both the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps.
The tour guide was a local guy who was born in the neighbouring village. The thing I liked most about the tour was that the guide mostly stuck to the facts knowing they would speak for themselves. He didn't shy away from uncomfortable details and mostly kept his commentary descriptive rather than emotional. There were a few times he did get into the emotional side of things but he quickly came back to the factual narration.
It's not really tourist season but the place was pretty busy. At a couple of points, particularly in the Auschwitz camp, there were 3 or 4 groups stacked up in the same room waiting to move to a particular spot. Everyone wears a headset so the guide can talk to you without everyone having to crowd around and without having to listen to all the other groups. Most people were on organised tours but there were a few who were doing self guided stuff so you don't actually have to sign up for a tour which was not the impression I got from the website.
I took a few photos of the place but mostly I just tried to be respectful of what happened there.
Overall it's a very well done museum and I "enjoyed" it. I did expect to be completely emotionally drained after 6 hours of walking around there but I really wasn't. Honestly the main feelings I had out of the place were utter disappointment in humans that it happened and disbelief at how clinical and methodical the whole process was.
A few comments on behaviour of people at the museum. Derek linked an "artwork" I guess you'd call it where an artist took a bunch of Auschwitz-Birkenau selfies off people's Facebook or Instagram accounts and superimposed those people's poses over horrific pictures of the actual facilities from the 40s.
Most people were walking around with a sombre and respectful but interested demeanour but not everyone:
1. A LOT of selfies from young people. None appeared to be blatantly disrespectful but there was definitely some duck face happening and a lot of poses from different angles to get the perfect shot.
2. A lot of young Jews wearing the Israeli flag as a cape and taking selfies.
3. One young woman kneeling in front of the memorial at back of Birkenau and just wailing for the entire 10 minutes I was in earshot. Her friend was just standing around behind her not knowing what to do.
4. A few people laughing and making jokes. I didn't hear or understand them so I'm going to assume they were not at the expense of the victims of the place. While I'm a firm believer that it's OK to make a joke about ANYTHING there's a time and a place for it.
I would recommend anyone going to Poland visit this museum or one of the other ones in different areas of the country. I feel like it's one of those things you sort of have to do if you're in the country, kind of like visiting Hiroshima or Nagasaki in Japan.
I got back to Kraków about 6pm so it was a pretty long day.
I had dinner at a Polish canteen style restaurant recommended by Droz which was nice. Hard to find (and subsequence conversations tell me this may not be the one Droz recommended) but the food was good, plentiful and pretty damn cheap.
On the 21st I did a day trip to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. It's a salt mine that's hundred of years old and is absolutely enormous. I managed to arrive purely by accident about 2 minutes before an English tour was starting which was very convenient.
The mine is quite interesting (much more so than the gold mine I saw a couple of days ago). The mine is 9 levels deep but tourists are only allowed on the first 3 levels.
There's a cathedral in the mine that is still a practicing church. It tends to get about 40 or 50 attendees to mass every week though it's mostly for the novelty of going to a church in a salt mine apparently.
Of the 8 people in the group I was the only one who elected to go onto the museum following the mine tour which meant I got a private tour of the museum. Probably wasn't really worth it though as it mostly covered the same stuff as the mine tour but in a bit more detail. So if you're a mining buff the museum is probably worth your time otherwise I'd skip it.
The 22nd was my last day in Kraków and I didn't really do much. I had a wander around the city and the Jewish quarter. I went to an art museum in the market square that had pieces from Polish artists over the last couple of hundred years. Not a big gallery and not a lot of pieces I liked though there were a handful of interesting ones.
Probably the big thing about today was my dinner plans. I changed hostel for a couple of nights to put me closer to the Jewish quarter since I hadn't really explored it yet. Right next door to the hostel was a restaurant called Amarylis which got a mention in the Michelin guide last year (but no star). So I decided to have myself a nice fancy dinner and made a booking for their tasting course.
The restaurant is in the basement of a boutique hotel and is quite tastefully decorated. They had a pianist who was playing for the evening. He was pretty good and kept doing renditions of popular pop songs which was quite amusing and added a bit of atmosphere to the place.
The food was OK without being great. Nicely presented and flavoursome but nothing that really knocked my socks off. It seemed to mostly be a spin on traditional Polish meals which tells me their target audience is tourists. I didn't take any photos of the meal (because you don't do that in a fancy restaurant ya douchebag!) but here are a couple I took off their Facebook page.
The wine pairing was fine but I was kind of disappointed to get a New Zealand Sauv Blanc for the first wine! I guess it's exotic for Europeans but not so much for Aussies. They probably felt the same about Spanish and French wines on the list.
Overall it was a nice meal and if you're in Kraków it's not a bad way to spend an evening but there are probably better options if you're looking for something really good.
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